


Dead Weight

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Prompt:</b> "Can I request a really fluffy/angsty fic with Sam having a nightmare about Kevin and Gadreel (having somehow not died at the finale) being there to witness it. Somewhere in the midst of their relationship where they're still working things out."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Weight

* * *

 

Sam felt something choking him. The smell of burnth flesh was too much to take, but it wasn't that which kept him from breathing - the feeling seemed to come from somewhere outside of him, outside the world where his hand was lifting from over Kevin's heated skin as he watched him fall back towards the ground somewhere too far below. He tried to move but the force that controlled him wouldn't let go, and neither did the constricting feeling that he didn't recognise as the power that bound him as prisoner within his body; he gasped for air and heard his own voice, and it was that pained moan that shattered the dream from around him.

He tried to struggle up but a palm rested over his chest, keeping him down, as another hand's fingers pushed under the rope tied around his chest, undoing it. It took Sam a while to realise that the rope around him was just the hem of his blanket; he'd wrapped himself in it like a cocoon and it was Gadreel whose hand was pushing his chest down as he carefully undid the knot from around him.

Nausea swelled inside the Sam - he looked away, punched aside the blanket's edge when it came loose enough for him to move even in the half-sleeping state he was stuck in, and he sat up and slid off the bed in one movement that landed him on his feet on the carpet laid next to the bed to prevent the cold of the floor from being the first thing he touched each morning. A curse, really; now he would have given everything to land on something that felt like  _something_. He walked across the soft layer, arms embracing his own body as he tried to calm himself down, feet finally crossing over to the cool floor and prompting a small shivering sigh from his lips.  
It took him a lot to dare to look back; Gadreel's face was illuminated by the reading light he'd put on between the time Sam had taken to walk through the room. He seemed guilty and concerned and almost afraid, but Sam had no words for him: bitterness, anger, grief and dissipating panic still had him in a firm grip and he couldn't spare a thought to the angel whom had caused him that all in the first place. Yet he didn't really blame Gadreel - in that moment, yes, he hated him, but he hated himself more, the feelings of weakness and blame that he held over himself first and foremost. He didn't feel like he deserved the compassion that lingered in the air for his sake and he hated knowing that the angel felt guilt on his own. It would have been easier if he hadn't and Sam could have pushed all of his to Gadreel instead, make him the one he could blame, but no, the fact that Gadreel acknowledged that Sam's pain was by his hand left Sam no room to punish him for it.

He let out another shaky breath and closed his eyes, but as soon as he had, he only saw Kevin's death again, and his lids sprung back open like he'd had acid released between them at contact. He choked, swallowed; Gadreel finally lowered his gaze and his fist gripped the blanket Sam had thrown aside.

The younger shook and his nails dug into the flesh of his both arms; through gritted teeth he managed to speak out the most neutral sentence his brain could muster into existence.  
"What time is it?" he asked, voice barely audible, raspy like through a bad connection.

"Three sixteen in the morning."

Sam nodded, but couldn't find another word. The silence was terrible and weighted like it was made of lead, and the air that the man was breathing seemed of the same material.

"Do you wish for me to go?" Gadreel asked after a brief while that had somehow stretched on for an eternity.

The hunter shook his head now instead, surprising himself. He turned on his heels, arms holding himself just that much tighter, and forced himself to look at the older.  
"Stay."

Gadreel nodded, although the manner in which he did so was minimalistic and unconfident.  
"I am -"

"I know. You don't have to - apologize. You - you can't, I mean, it's - we've been through this."

The fallen angel nodded again, and if possible, his nod this time was even more timid than the one before it.  
Sam's legs felt stiff as he forced himself back towards the bed, but he felt relieved when he could lower his weight back on the mattress: he tried closing his eyes again, back turned towards Gadreel, and this time, no waking nightmare caught up to him. It did so less often these days, but the first weeks had instilled a deep-rooted fear in him by giving him flashbacks to the murder not only during his sleep but throughout the day as well, almost each time that he so much as blinked too slowly, as if just closing his eyes was a portal back in time to that moment. He could have spent his whole life reliving it in vivid detail; it never really went away.

"I don't... I don't blame you."

"Perhaps you should."

"It wouldn't help me," Sam breathed out, "It wouldn't change anything."

Gadreel's silence was of the agreeing sort, but it also spoke of his unwillingness to admit it. He wanted the blame, perhaps out of adjustment; he'd been punished most of his existence. Sam felt like he understood how it felt to lack that, as if missing a step each time the topic came up yet nothing ended up hurting for it. The same stillness while waiting for the inevitable that never came, and the disappointment that illogically followed when nothing happened and instead the emptiness, the fall within one's own self, remained like a void that just grew larger with each heartbeat counting the absence of consequence.

Finally Sam's arms fell from his chest and he leaned back over them, eyes still closed, breathing slowing to nothing: he moved back until he could feel the warmth radiating from the older's body, and as he'd expected, he soon felt Gadreel's arms guide him down over his lap and when he landed, he let out one more of those long, trembling sighs.  
He felt empty inside, not in the expecting way but in a dead manner, like his emotions had ceased - the fear and the grief had settled but nothing was replacing them. The older's palms held his shoulders until he was relaxed and only then the other hand moved gently into his hair, the other shifting to rest over his chest, now without the pressure from before.  
Sam wondered if he could sleep here instead, but Gadreel needed rest the same as he did; the only choice he had was to keep them up until he felt safe enough to go back to sleep and then move and hope it lasted, but with any luck he'd manage to coax the other to hold him through the night, even if it would be stomach to back and an arm like a restraint pulled across Sam's body to keep him still. It was better than solitude, if not exactly what he wanted.

"You know, I don't have to be a psychic -" Sam began, but his sentence cut sharply to make room for reconsideration.  
How fitting was that? He'd almost been one before. Almost. The curse still ran in his veins.  
"- to know what you're thinking."

"What am I thinking?" Gadreel asked him, his voice powerless but managing a tone of curiosity through it nonetheless.

"Why you're here. Why we're here. Why I let you in, why I'm resting on you, most of all, why do I love you. I wish I had an answer, but I don't. I keep wondering that myself. It's - I made a choice. I've never made a choice like that before, I've never consciously decided to love someone, but I did it with you, because that's what I had; a choice to either give myself over to hating you, or really forgiving you, going where that choice would lead me. I knew where it would, in a way. I wasn't surprised that it brought me here. But why I made that choice, it's... it was like giving up, like really letting go. And I'm happy that it happened."

"Even now?"

"Especially now. I don't get stuck in that nightmare anymore. I have it and then it fades. Before, it was like it blinded me, I kept living it, and the more I blamed it on you the worse the drive got - the more I got consumed by it. Now it's just... I know I'll have it, I know I'll have it for the rest of my life and that it'll never get better, but when I wake up to this - the whole of what we've built - it's easier to let go of it each time. I remember that it's past, and it can't hold me anymore, so it fades."

Sam felt Gadreel nod, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the angel looking somewhere far beyond the wall and the door ahead that his eyes had to be seeing. The hunter reached up a hand and brought his fingers across the male's cheek, a tired, weary smile on his lips, and managed to catch the other's attention effortlessly, bringing him back to where they were now. He kept smiling, just for the sake of seeing the confused small hint of it reflect upon Gadreel's lips just the same; Gadreel never seemed to be able to figure out what made the younger smile, but he rarely left the gesture unanswered, and most of the time it was a genuine sign of surprise that he probably didn't register like Sam did. At least he wasn't playing it like Sam was, like it was the kind of a reward that Sam felt it was, the last seal to convince the hunter that everything about them was real and things truly had changed this much. It brought a small, warm flutter within Sam's chest, one that drove away the dead void and the cold that accompanied it.

"I hope you won't have it again," Gadreel finally said, his voice quiet and soft and tinted by that smile that his lips had forgotten to drive away.

"Not tonight," Sam replied, closing his eyes again, "Maybe not tomorrow either."


End file.
